Students Leaving the Church

That students tend to leave the Church when the graduate high school is no secret. It’s recently made it’s way into the GOP primary field. Tim King is right that the fact that college students walk away from the faith has nothing to do with colleges. However, I still think Tim misses the point.

He argues that the reason many college students leave the faith isn’t because of what they’re taught in college, but because of the hypocrisy they see among Christians. Yes, hypocrisy turns people off to the church. Yes, hypocrisy is painful. But it also tends to be the favorite gripe of those of us who have felt it’s sting. In the end, however, hypocrisy is only part of the reason students walk away from the Christian faith. There is now plenty of data out there which suggest that the problem is more broad than simply hypocrisy.

So, in addition to hypocrisy, it would have been nice to see Tim discuss the following in his op ed:

1. Parents – Now, he almost touches on this with his comments on hypocrisy. But he still misses the bull’s eye. Yes, sometimes parents are hypocrits, but not always of the type Tim imagines. Instead, sometimes parents simply don’t model a robust faith. They model of faith that is comfortable and sterile, and their children simply inherit the same faith that they see their parents enacting. If we want to see fewer students leaving the church, than we need to help parents develop their own faith at much deeper levels.

2. Youth Ministry – Lest I be too hard on parents, I actually think a greater part of the blame lies with youth ministries (and churches, generally). We have not helped to disciple parents and we’ve given students exactly what they (sometimes, sorta) ask for: a faith that is comfortable, but not one that’s worth anything. Because many of us are either A) young and naive or B) worried about numbers and our jobs or C) woefully untrained, we end up running youth ministries which do a great job of keeping kids away from drugs, sex and alcohol, but a pitiful job of forming life-long disciples. We separate students into a age-specific ghetto in the name of giving them something that will connect with them, but in the end we simply end up cutting them off from the life-giving Body of Christ, no matter how broken and deformed that Body might be.

3. Questions – Going right along with #2 above, in my experience (and here we leave what is fairly well established by surveys and move into more conjectural and anecdotal territory), a contributing factor to students leaving the faith is that they haven’t been deeply challenged and taught. We tend to teach students within a narrow theological framework (either denominationally, or in terms of assumptions about what a good Christian does). So, we teach students they can’t question God (because, I guess, we’ve never read about Moses, or the Psalms, or Job). But when bad stuff happens, what do we expect them to do, remain silent? Or we teach them a narrow interpretation of a passage, for instance, that one must believe in a six literal day creation to be a good Christian. When students realize they don’t know if they can do that, they figure they must have to stop being a Christian. Or we teach them a particular theological point as a litmus test, for instance, God’s sovereignty, and when they aren’t quite sure if they can believe it like we’ve explained it, they figure they have to walk away from the faith, rather than turn to other traditions within the faith.

We could talk about several other factors that often contribute to students walking away from the faith, but I think I’ve made my point: we can’t limit it merely to hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is sometimes an issue. Sometimes it’s questions students have about faith. Often they’ve never had a robust, passionate faith modelled for them, and perhaps even more often they’ve had a shallow youth ministry that–inadvertently–did everything possible to make sure they weren’t connected with the larger Body.

So, this discussion obviously braves the question: what do we do about it? On the one hand, the problems seem insurmountable. But, on the other, we can tackle one thing at a time. There are many in the youth ministry would that are realizing these issues and thinking of ways to address them. To say it’ll be an uphill battle is probably an understatement, but at least it’s a place to start.

On Turning Ships

My senior pastor has an analogy that he constantly brings up to those of us on staff: making changes at a church is like turning a super tanker, it takes time. This couldn’t be more true. It’s also very true for a youth ministry, though youth ministries are–by nature–more agile than entire churches.

Andrew Root has recently written on the idea that youth ministry may help churches to reclaim theological thinking. Much like many of the changes to churches in the ’80s and ’90s can be traced to youth ministry, so too a sort of turn back to the theological. I agree with the idea, in theory, but I’m not convinced that the so-called theological turn in youth ministry is quite prevalent enough at present (N.B. On twitter Andrew Root acknowledged this as an issue). Ironically, when once upon a time senior pastors would have longed for more theologically astute youth pastors, now we have youth pastors who are recognizing a need for theological nuance and their senior pastors are staring at them and arguing for a more basic, unnuanced approach. There is a certain twisted poetic justice to this.

I’m thankful that those in my current ministry support my own quest to continue learning and thinking. I’m also thankful for the parents and others in my church who are willing to give things a try. Moving from an entertainment-based model of youth ministry to a more theologically nuanced ministry is not exactly easy. Turning ships takes time. Turning ministries takes time and is often painful on various levels. Ultimately, turning the ship is still worth it because our students deserve to be taken seriously. It’s one of the things for which they’re longing. It’s worth it because the church needs youth ministries (indeed, churches) that have more depth than a dodgeball game and a thrown together devotion are likely to provide. Ultimately it’s worth it because Jesus has called us to something more than a culturally-bound consumeristic expression of his Kingdom.

But it can be very, very hard.

Young Women, Driscoll and the Church

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I dislike much of what Mark Driscoll says. I’m unwilling to completely write him off. He has some good things to say, but he also has plenty of stupid things that he says. Brian, over at Rethinking Youth Ministry, has recently posted on this subject (you can see a video of Driscoll from awhile back and a response to it, complete with verses taken out of context, at the link). I also happen to agree with him, the majority of committed Christian teens that I see are girls. Now, I do agree with Driscoll that we could do with singing a few less love songs to Jesus. I wouldn’t mind stone churches instead of fuchsia ones with flowers.

But that isn’t the issue. No one is saying you can’t take students mountain climbing. What Driscoll is doing is drawing an entirely arbitrary line between “masculine” and “feminine” and then saying that you want to get the masculine guys (I assume those would be the ones with trucks, women, and businesses) into church because if you get them you “win it all,” (ie, the women, babies, businesses, etc). To be honest, it’s a stupid argument. Women are quite capable of disagreeing with their husbands. Beyond that, women are often more capable then their male counterparts at running companies, organizing things, and customizing their ride. At the same time I’m forced to wonder where the quiet, shy men who prefer books to football fall in Driscoll’s paradigm.

Stereotypes are not helpful. When Mark Driscoll talks about women (EDIT: let me add here, “in any public context in which I have heard him speak”), he engages solely in stereotyping. What Mark Driscoll says about women is not helpful. Conversely, what he says about men really isn’t helpful either. In the end I’m quite glad that the girls in my youth ministry have no idea who Driscoll is.

Posts worth reading, Vol 1

Over the past week or so I’ve read a number of excellent posts on other blogs that I’ve wanted to comment about. However, some of them I don’t really have enough to say to warrant an entire post. Most of them I simply don’t have the time to give a full post to. So, I’m going to lump them all into a single post, with links, a few observations from yours truly, and an overall encouragement that you read them.

The Thoughts of a Medialist – Kevin Wilson has a good read with a nice little anecdote about his own time at Johns Hopkins. What is perhaps most interesting in this entire debate is that almost everyone wants to say they are in the middle. William Dever does not consider himself a maximalist. Of course, Kevin doesn’t consider himself one either–though perhaps he considers Dever one, I don’t know. He also has some good thoughts on what amounts to demonizing people in order to “win” the debate. Which reminds me of a recent post by Art.

demonizing: the leading tactic in christian debate – Art is absolutely right. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve seen this all too often. Even recently, I’ve seen this take place. Honest questions are easily dismissed when the questioner can be made out to be something less than a person, or at least the type of person that one normally associates with.

Pensive Thoughts on Faith and Calling – Earl has some open and honest thoughts about calling. He and I have had many a discussion over coffee on this very topic. It’s always fascinating to watch as a person’s thinking on a topic develops, and Earl’s has developed greatly. As my comment on his blog indicates, I think the two of us are in a very similar boat. Regardless of all that, it’s a post worth reading and you should really check it out. It brings up some excellent topics, not least of which is the separation between the laity and academia in Christendom.

Not really a radical… – On a somewhat related topic, Wezlo waxes eloquent about how he’s not really a radical. I say he just needs to keep telling himself that. But in all seriousness, Wezlo brings up some good topics. The idea of seeing the way forward through the past isn’t new, but it’s always good to think about. Furthermore, Wezlo tries to differentiate between an activist and an idealist, a discussion that is worth having.

Sadistic Approaches to Teaching Biblical Languages – This is simply a brilliant post by John Hobbins. You should read it, twice. I have a few professors here at GCTS I’d like to force to read it. I’ve long been of the opinion that languages are best learned inductively. Memorizing endless paradigms, although helpful at points, is an extremely boring way to learn a language. The textbook I used for Hebrew I and II introduced each lesson with a sentence from the Hebrew Bible. Each time we learned something, we were learning it in context. It was a great way to learn. I’m taking Aramaic this semester, and although the language isn’t that different from Hebrew, the professor I have is much different from my Hebrew prof in undergrad. I was never made to learn paradigms, beyond the basic ones, in my undergrad Hebrew courses. Regardless of how one might feel on the necessity of learning paradigms, I managed an A+ in Intermediate Hebrew Grammar last semester. That means I did better than most of the people who had memorized all the paradigms. Yet, in our first Aramaic session of the semester, the class was assured that if one did not memorize a plethora of paradigms, one would not be able to achieve above a C in Hebrew, and likewise in Aramaic. All of this to simply say that there is no excuse for making a language boring and cold to your students.

At this point I’ll stop. Some great posts there, and I recommend you take a few moments to check them out.

Emasculating Men

Over the past couple years I’ve heard more about how the church is emasculating men than on any other church topic. It comes primarily from the blogosphere, or various conversations. Partially I think Mark Driscoll is to blame for the constant talk about it, though that stupid Wild at Heart book also deserves some of my ire. I’ve even heard it in some youth ministry circles. How as youth ministers we need to defend teenage guys from their mothers. We need to teach them, I assume, to belch, laugh at others’ pain, and defend themselves through physical violence. I find such things to border on genuine insanity.

However, my friend Art has recently posted an excellent critique of an article that basically rehashes the same things I’ve been hearing for two years, only the article throws in some horrid exegesis about Jacob and Esau.

I really can’t say things better than Art has, so I will let things rest by reiterating something I’ve said many times before. I have more hair on my body than any “manly man” you’re likely to find, yet I take the Scriptures’ exhortations to love, kindness, gentleness and self-control very seriously. These “feminine” qualities seem to be deeply a part of who Jesus was, and I’ll stick with those, you can keep the trucks and cheap bear.

Article published

I’m very excited to announce that an article of mine has been published at Youthworker.com. It’s not the print magazine, but it’s a step in the right direction. Apart from the excitement of having an article see the light of day on something other than my blog, I’m excited because I think the topic that the article focuses on is worthwhile, and needs to be discussed in youth ministry circles. Now, I don’t have any delusions of grandeur. I don’t think a single article is going to start a revolution in youth ministry circles. But hopefully it will cause some of us to begin thinking.

I’d love to hear any thoughts you all may have on the article.

Students and Youth Ministry Ownership

Tim has a great post on helping students take ownership of their youth ministry. I have some comments to make, and I thought rather than take up several paragraphs in his comment box I’d just post them here. Some background first, anyone who has been reading this blog regularly knows that we have just gone through some changes in our “main event” on Wednesday nights at the ministry I pastor. So this is something important to me, something that I’ve been thinking about, and something I think we (ie, the youth ministry blogosphere) needs to discuss.

First, I agree very much with time in his three steps. Students will have no interest in ministry if they don’t have relationships. It’s extremely important for us as youth workers to be diligent in developing those relationships. However, as I’m sure Tim would agree, we can’t develop them expressly for the purpose of getting these teens to work in our youth ministries. That is called using people. Which I think happens all too often in youth ministry when we begin discussing “ownership.” Too often what a youth pastor wants when she says “ownership” is actually “free labor.” We need to be cautious and check our motivations for wanting students to have ownership. The other two steps that Tim lists out are good as well. I remember Chris Seavey, in my undergraduate work, having two similar steps that he recommended. Something like having them join you in basic stuff (setting up chairs, sound tests, that kind of thing), then joining you in more “advanced” things (leading games or worship, being in charge of a section of an event), and then release them to do those things on their own.

Second, Tim mentions that jumping to #3 doesn’t work, and he’s absolutely right. We can’t just drop something in a students’ lap and expect them to want to own it, much less do well at owning it. It’s a process, and as all things in ministry (and life) it takes time. Now, I’m an impatient person, so I’d much prefer if we could just be like…”Okay, here ya go. Run with that.” Sometimes there are students in a youth ministry who are ready for that. If so, they are normally ready because they have had time to get ready, and people have worked with them to help them to that point.

Third, I’d like to add something to what Tim has said. He mentions this at the beginning of his post, but I think it deserves more attention. We need to make sure we are defining what we mean by ownership. We need to have tangible things of which students can take ownership. I think these “things,” whatever they are, need to be verbally defined as well as logically a unit over which someone could have ownership. Case-in-point, at our Wednesday night event we have a prayer room each week. This is something we’ve started very recently. The point of this prayer room is to allow students to, at any point in the night, take some time to just sit silently with God. At present the setup for the room is fairly basic. Over time my hope is that students will step forward and own that part of our Wednesday night gathering. I have verbally explained this, and it is a logical unit that students can wrap their minds around (as opposed to the intangible idea of “ownership of the youth group”). Another example, we do a time of Scripture reading on Wednesday nights. Again, my hope is that over time (and this is actually already beginning to happen) students will step forward and read the scripture passage for the week. Over the long-term I hope to involve students in selecting the passages to be read, and my real hope is that eventually I can step out of the teaching to some extent and allow students that role.

In fact, we have designed our Wednesday night program to include a number of logical units that we hope will eventually be “owned” by students. Scripture reading, explanation of the reading (ie, teaching), activity (to reinforce the topic), prayer time, discussion time. Before those things we have a time to hang out where students can play video games or use the prayer room, play card games or board games, or just hang out and munch on some snacks. Potentially each of these logical units could be owned by a student or group of students (taking care of setting up snacks and making sure there are enough, choosing and running the games for a given week, etc).

I’m not saying that the way we have chosen to configure our mid-week gathering is the perfect way. But I do think it incorporates something very important in helping students take ownership of a youth ministry. That “something” is allowing them to see, in very tangible ways, the things of which we are asking them to take ownership. Certainly, this needs to come after relationship building, as Tim has correctly pointed out. I do think it needs to come eventually though, and we need to be explicit in our expectations. Maybe this is one of those things to file under openness and authenticity.

On entering a new youth ministry

It’s been quite a while since I’ve sat down and tried to blog about something related to youth ministry. This is partially because this semester has been so busy, and also because youth ministry has been so busy. It’s not so much that we’ve been busy with events in the youth ministry, though we’ve had those, but I’ve been busy trying to settle in and figure out how things work here, etc. Now that I feel like things are finally getting on track I wanted to take a few moments away from typing papers and post a bit about what my experience has been so far.

First, some history. I hold a Bachelor of Religious Education with a major in Bible/Theology and a minor in Youth Ministry. I’ve served at a small, rural church plant as the Pastor of Student Ministries, and at a larger established church body as their Youth Ministry Intern (read: unpaid youth pastor). I’ve also served in a number of other youth ministries as a volunteer/mentor. In both of the ministries above I came in at a time when not much was happening in the ministry. In the case of the church plant the youth ministry had just been started. In the case of the larger church there was an established youth ministry but it wasn’t doing much, aside from a Wednesday evening event and Sunday School. Because I was the new guy, and because I was asked to be the point person for both ministries, we were able to bring cohesion to the ministries and move forward with discipleship, etc. Now, fast forward several years.

I took a position this past July at Immanuel Baptist Church in Ipswich MA. The people have been wonderful. They have welcomed Mandy and I, loved us, helped us, been concerned for us. It has been an excellent experience, especially given some of my former experiences with churches – but I digress. This youth ministry was different. My first week was only two weeks after the former youth pastor had left. He was a good guy, from all I’ve heard, and so there wasn’t a feeling of the youth ministry being stalled. I was aware of this, and so wasn’t interested in immediately changing things. I figured we could just continue to do what we had been doing and move along with that. Two problems!

1. The church/youth ministry was very used to having new youth pastors come in and change things, putting their own unique skills and gifts to use. The youth pastors at IBC are normally seminarians, so they tend to “rotate” every 3-4 years.
2. What I thought was the way things were done wasn’t, strictly speaking, the way they were done. I got the wrong impression because of the fact that I never actually saw how the former youth pastor ran things.

Add to this that at the beginning of the school year the entire youth ministry team from over the summer departed (some to college, some to grad school, and Mandy because she had Akkadian on Wednesday nights), and you have a recipe for…well, “disaster” would be melodramatic, but a recipe for something that isn’t positive.

As the fall got rolling it became increasingly apparent that something was not working. We had left the schedule of Wednesday nights largely intact, and I had changed the teaching style to be more discussion based, which is really how I prefer to teach. However, it became clear as the Fall moved on that something wasn’t quite clicking. Now, how did it become clear? A variety of ways. First, some students who were very committed to the former youth pastor began coming less frequently. Other students began wanting to discuss less and less the topics we were trying to discuss and more and more whatever they wanted to discuss (ie, Jeans, holes in shoes, soda, etc). There was also just a feeling of unease and tension.

So, by the time October was halfway over, I knew something had to change. As a stop-gap measure I moved to a much more “I talk, you listen” style of teaching. Amazingly, this has seemed to hold the students’ attention more than having a discussion did. We also began planning a “redesign” of our Wednesday night program, as well as figuring out why on earth we do our Wednesday night program. I should point out that I don’t believe a “redesign” of things on Wednesday nights is going to do us a bit of good in the long run. But it needs to be done in this case. Still, redesigning a program is not the answer to all youth ministry problems, and I don’t want to give that impression. It can, however, be helpful.

So, where do we sit now? In a couple weeks (December 5th) we will implement the redesigned Wednesday night program. This will include changes such as: less time just “hanging out,” a scripture reading, short lesson/”homilies” teaching through the Bible at a “somewhat” in depth level (I say somewhat because I don’t view it as that in depth, but some others might), a greater focus on prayer, activities to try to connect what the reading and lesson talked about to the students in a tactile or emotional manner, and a debrief time to tie everything together and give students a chance to interact and ask questions. No doubt by February some of this will have been tweaked, but this is what we’re looking at at present. Overall we’re trying to create an environment that will be conducive to students experiencing the Faith. To this end we’ll also hoping to use lamps instead of the overhead lighting, and each week we’ll have a prayer room set up for students to use, if they desire.

That’s not the real reason I set out to post today though. Rather, I wanted to take a few moments and point out some things I’ve learned through this whole experience.

1. In the words of Mad-Eye Moody, “Play to your strengths!” – Many youth pastors overdo this, forging youth ministries that rise and fall on their own personalities. However, you can’t go to the other extreme where you refuse to recognize that you have unique gifts, abilities and talents that should influence the ministry of which you are a part. Because of this, it’s okay to modify things so that you are using your strengths in your ministry. Be sensitive to the students. You may need to make changes slowly (or more quickly). But don’t be afraid to make changes if they are needed.
2. The importance of a team to minister to students cannot be overstated. Mark Yaconelli has some excellent thoughts on calling a team to serve students in his book, Contemplative Youth Ministry, I highly recommend the entire book, actually.
3. Involve students in planning. This really goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway.
4. Don’t let your past interfere with your present. This is a lot easier to say than to do. But it needs to be said. I know of many, many, many youth pastors who have been hurt by churches. I have been hurt. When we are hurt we want to avoid any mistakes on our part that may have lead to that hurt. However, if you are like me you overcompensate and become frightened of doing anything that might give someone the wrong impression and thus cause them to have some vague reason for not liking me which could lead, eventually, to me being hurt. At the same time, don’t go to the other extreme and think this is some kind of license to be a jerk and be the one hurting people.

You could look in the archive and find some of what has happened in my past. I could make a post about it, and perhaps some day I will. But I think for many of us, the best thing to do is forget our pasts, at least somewhat. We need to type of forgetting, I think, that Miroslav Volf talks about in Exclusion & Embrace, a kind of forgetting that is ultimately eschatological, but which still has real power here in the present (at least, I think that’s what Volf is getting at).

A Halo for Youth Ministry

So, over the past week or so there have been several posts in the youth ministry blogosphere that deal with using Halo in youth ministry settings. I decided that I would go ahead and chime in. Before I do however, a few disclaimers – I have yet to play the Halo 3. To be completely honest, I don’t have time. I have played through the campaign for the original Halo, and I’ve spend plenty of hours playing multiplayer. I’ve also played, on occasion, Halo 2 multiplayer. I’m also an avid video game fan.

So, to start, we need to acknowledge that someone’s theology is ultimately going to be a huge deciding factor in playing Halo, or other FPS video games at a church youth event. If one is a committed pacifist than I imagine Halo will be less likely to show up at a youth ministry event. On the other hand if one is not quite that committed to pacifism Halo may be more likely to show up. Theology impacting youth ministry is a good thing. We do need to be consistent, overall, between our theology and our practice.

Moving on from theology specifically, I think Tim (linked above) hits the nail on the head when he says that we need to be consistent across our practices. Playing paintball, laser tag, or T rated FPS games and then bemoaning Halo as “violent” (or worse, something crazy like saying it “teaches people to kill”) and saying that it is not a good game to play at youth seems to me a bit inconsistent – but each person will have to sort that out on their own. Tim goes 2 for 2 when he says that Christian video games are really no alternative.

However, I think Brian, over at Rethinking Youth Ministry, brings up an excellent point. If we are using Halo, or other video games, to attract students we need to be careful. If our youth ministries are going to be cut in half if we stop playing Halo, we have done something wrong. I’ve used video games in the past, and I have used them attractionally. In my present ministry we play Guitar Hero and DDR regularly, and may very well begin playing the first Halo, or one of the worms’ games, at some point in the future. These games aren’t used to attract students so much as they are things we do together, as a community. Some students play, others watch, we talk and have fun together. Some might become nervous with the idea that a game console is helping us form community – but I would make that argument. It’s obviously not the only thing that helps us form a community, and it certainly doesn’t define our community.

So, I would agree with Tim that it’s a gray area. I’d agree with Brian that there’s a problem if students are going to drop out of our ministries if we don’t play Halo. In my own ministry I deal with games like this: if they help bring us together, laughing, having fun, talking, being together that’s great, we’ll use them. If instead they destroy conversation, shut people down, and lead to arguing and bickering, then we won’t use them. Case-in-point: Guitar Hero can sometimes, in our ministry, lead to two people playing who aren’t talking to each other and aren’t interacting with those watching. That needs to change or GH may be coming off our repertoire of normal video games. This is also one of the reasons I’d love to get a Wii for the youth ministry. Mario Strikers Charged, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Wii Sports, these are the kind of games I can see us playing together, laughing with, and talking about afterwards.

Video games used to get students to come = bad idea (IMO)
Video games used to build community = good idea (IMO)